[Something Clever about Spinning]: Acid Eye of Reckoning Sentinel (SR 80, controller friendly)

Grim Dawn Classes, Skills and Builds
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Part three of my controller friendly build series: Acid EoR Sentinel
grimtools link.

Update for 1.1.9.7: They buffed it. 50% more damage to health on EoR. Not sure why, but hey, it’s stronger.

Playstyle: cast Curse of Frailty, cast Plague of Rot on tough enemies, cast judgement, spin until everything is dead, refreshing CoF, PoR, and judgement as necessary.

Stats with defense focused gear (Ascension inactive):

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Full DPS gear (didn't bother to do devotions)

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Introduction

There are a lot of EoR builds in the compendium, but not one acid EoR build, despite the obvious strengths of the Korvan Dunefiend set. All the other builds seem to top out at around 300,000 DPS, while this one tops out over 450,000, or 380,000 with 14k HP and all resistances overcapped, at an average overcap of 29% (a lot of that is because of acid, but even so…) This build is a beast, able to speedily clear SR80 (and probably higher but I have no desire to try). It also requires no effort at all to kill Morgoneth.
This build is also great for farming, especially if you use Vire’s Might, since it shreds bosses and trash alike, and you can just dash through anything that isn’t worth your time.

Builds don’t get much more controller friendly than this, since it’s primarily limited not by button-pressing skill, but by positioning. And while, with the limited number of buttons, I had to choose between Plague of Rot and Vire’s Might, Vire’s Might isn’t necessary for clearing; it’s just great for running faster.

You probably could try this as a dervish, but I don’t see how it could possibly be as strong.

Video proof of clear
Lazy Morgoneth kill
Mogdrogen kill https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZKbXmwBisI

make sure your lightning overcap is over 80% and you’ll be fine.
Quick Mogdrogen modification/what I used
A better way

Fight tips

  • Offense: I can’t think of anything to say other than keep your buffs and debuffs active, and to keep spinning.

  • Defense: Due to the overcapped resists and the debuff from soulfire, this build will facetank most enemies. Against really tough ones, like you can sometimes see in SR80, keep moving back and forth or in circles while attacking them. This prevents you from standing on bad stuff (see clear for example.) Don’t be afraid to dash away for a few seconds, while waiting for something to come off of cooldown.

Gear

Essential Gear:

  • Dunefiend set: core

Stuff I’m pretty sure is best in slot:

  • Meditation: this gives a ton of damage
  • Pack of Deadly Means: has a great vitality to acid conversion, and insane offensive ability.
  • Viperfang grips: Sure, you have to run Jackal to max out attack speed, but the offensive ability (100 + 4% on a good one) is a huge deal, and it gives the 26th point to Blood of Dreeg.
  • Greaves of Ill Omen: they may not have acid damage, but the +2 to soulfire gives more dps than any other boots, and it reduces enemy damage. Combine that with stun, bleed, and elemental resists, and these boots are great.
  • Sigil of the Bear King: gives the last point to EoR, has attack speed, and some very useful resists.
  • Pestilence of Dreeg (Plague of Corruption version): sure it’s a huge pain to craft, but it gives +1 to all skills, useful stats, and some important conversions. The plague itself is nice for taking down strong enemies, although it cost me the button I was using for Vire’s Might. There certainly could be a better necklace for this build, but Crate has yet to put it into the game.

Other stuff:

  • Ring of Shuroth: my intial plan was to have two of these, but after like 50 clears I still have none (does anyone want to trade?) The vitality to acid is nice, plus it would add a couple of eyes spinning around you, for even more spinning!

  • Widow’s Sting: I like the acid damage, the attack speed, the elemental resist and the +2 to blood of dreeg.

  • Maniacal Viloth’s Ring of Alacrity : as far as Monster Infrequents go, this one is pretty easy to farm, and I got by with just one rare affix. The OA is the main reason I haven’t found a better replacement for this.

  • Venomtongue mantle: while I like the chaos to acid conversion and the stats it provides, I think a good Zantarin’s Shoulderguard (maybe Maniacal Zantarin’s Shoulderguard of Blight) would be substantially stronger. I’m not sure, because I can never get a good one.

  • Dread Knight’s Legplates: To be honest, I’m not sure why I chose these over Venomskin Legwraps or Nidalla’s Legwraps. I think I wanted the health back when I was dying a lot (before I overcapped resists), but I don’t know why I was using it for SR80. It works though, although it probably should be replaced.

Components

  • Mark of the Traveler: I wanted the slow resist.

  • Sacred Plating x2: I probably should have used one Living Armor and one Sacred Plating. Oh well.

  • Molten skin: I wanted to overcap fire, and I forgot about Spellscorched plating until just now.

Augments

  • Rune of Violent Delights: I wanted something that would be strong for disengaging while being usable for engaging, since I cut Vire’s Might. Leap and Teleport would work for engaging, however they would be weaker for disengaging since they don’t apply debuffs or damage (and therefore any lifesteal) until they reach their destination. Violent Delights has the strongest debuff of that class of runes, at least given the debuffs already applied by this build. If you’re using a mouse+keyboard, you have access to vire’s might, and can also use the jump/teleport abilities to hit a target destination, so there are probably better medal augments out there.

  • Irrah’s Patience (necklace): I wanted more health and more armor.

  • Irrah’s Blood (rings): this offers nice DA, and aether resist that is crucial for overcaps. The vitality damage isn’t ideal, but this build has enough damage.

Writing all this out, it seems like may be a more powerful version of this build a few item changes away.

Devotions

Core

  • Murmur/Rumor: acid RR

  • Manticore/Acid Spray: while it only provides around 6,000 DPS and a measly 3% RR beyond Scales of Ulcama, it applies it in an AOE. It also gives passive bonuses to acid damage.

  • Scales of Ulcama: even with all the points I dumped into spirit, I still had some trouble with energy regen. Scales solves that, and also gives some pretty good healing.

  • Ghoul: lifesteal and fantastic emergency healing make this an excellent choice.

  • Raven: for high SRs, this build is a little low on OA, so Raven makes a huge difference.

Not Core

  • Jackal: this is pretty much just for maxing attack speed.

  • Panther: OA and crit damage

  • Everything Else: provides important defense. Sure, you could go for Abomination and Affliction, and maybe even Yugol, but you need the defense to do high SR. Or at least I do.

Skill choices

  • Judgement: I don’t enjoy using this skill, because it wastes time that I could be spinning, but there isn’t anything controller friendly that has anywhere close to this DAR.

  • Possession vs Path of the Three: PotT seems like a good choice at first, since it has 4 extra points compared to Possession, some nice physical to acid conversion, and it would free up 18 points from Occultist to use on stuff like Resilience and Ascension. However, since this build does not substantially benefit from CDR, and doesn’t have any high weapon damage multipliers to apply the poison damage, with its 50 chaos damage (of which as much as 29 gets converted to acid) Possession ends up giving similar DPS. And since this build requires points in cunning, physique, and spirit, the 18 points is Occultist are definitely not wasted. Possession also provides fantastic chaos resist, 16% damage absorption, and max skill disruption protection, and PotT can’t compete with that.

Leveling tips I leveled this a while ago, so I don't remember too many details on how it went.

For devotions, because this has no max tier devotions to level, you can take whatever path you like. Ghoul, Murmur, and Manticore are going to be great at all levels, so get those quickly.

For skills, you can choose between an unconverted Eye of Reckoning, or simply using Righteous Fervor w/ Dreeg’s Reproach. I did the latter, and it went pretty well. If you’re doing that, I’d probably prioritize points in the following way: Righteous Fervor, Consecration, Smite, Vulnerability, Blood of Dreeg, Solael’s Witchfire, and then just fill in your weaknesses.

For items, there aren’t any that stand out too much. If you’re doing EoR, you probably want a Riftclaw Slicer or Kymon’s Sanctified Blade, and then to build around that element.

If you’re doing Righteous Fervor, Korvan Gaze, [ Gannar’vakkar’s Sting, and Gulgazor’s Heart might be worth farming. Otherwise, just stack acid damage.

Final note: If you get a good crucible or SR clear, let me know and I can update the build. Suggestions are welcome.

5 Likes
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It’s not ideal, but evidently it’s enough. With all the overmaxed resists, the 24% damage reduction from soulfire, and the 16% damage absorption from Possession, even a crit on a powerful ability shouldn’t be enough to kill you outright, and when ghoul triggers you’ll heal instantly.

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Not in my opinion. In your devotions, you’re sacrificing a ton of armor and freeze resist (make sure you have ascension turned off when looking at CC resists in grimtools), and that will create serious weaknesses, much more serious than the couple hundred fewer DA I have. You’ve also sacrificed a lot of DA in the devotions, which you’ve replaced with physique (also, you need 511 cunning to equip the swords. When you take that into account, you only have around 70 extra DA). That looks alright on GrimTools, but if you looked at the actual DPS it would be way down. I’m not a fan of tainted eruption, since it’s worth a paltry 6k DPS and this build doesn’t struggle for AOE damage. More importantly, even with rotgut venom, rat, and abomination, you’re still doing 10% less damage per weapon attack, but when you factor in that the flat acid damage from abomination and the flat poison from rat are inflating the attack numbers - since in this build weapon damage is only about half of EoR’s output - I’d guess you’re doing maybe 80% of the damage I am. The extra OA will help with that, but I have enough OA and DAR to avoid missing attacks, and this build doesn’t benefit that much from extra crits, especially since you’ve lost 6% crit damage from panther. Those pants are hard to get, and I think that Nidalla’s legwraps are going to be stronger anyway, especially with their -15% total speed.

So armor, freeze resist, and 20% of your damage (and therefore close to 20% of your healing) for a few hundred OA and less than a hundred DA, and a bit of health? It might be a little stronger in some fights, and maybe even the majority of them, but I believe that in a substantial portion of fights you’ll really struggle because of the armor and freeze resist that you’re missing, whereas I don’t think there are many fights where my version will struggle but yours won’t. I do like Shuroth’s ring, if I can ever get one.

If you’re really that concerned about DA, you’re probably better off equipping Nidalla’s Legwraps like I probably should have done in the first place, and then just taking some points out of spirit and putting them into physique (which seems to be the meta anyway), since that won’t cost you the same defenses as losing Scarab, Sailor’s Guide, and 3 points in Obelisk. I like that you’re making suggestions though.

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Nice build, without proper physique investment it’s normal that you have low DA but you have managed the put things through.

I always wondered why two dunefine blades has the same phys>acid modifier on eor. One of them useless, the set bonus has full fire>acid on eor and with a good rolled helm and chest provides global full lightning>acid conversion. The set is obviously for both dervish and sentinel, so I believe one of the blades should have chaos or vitality>acid to let the build have more pure acid eor. Hell it might be chaos>acid conversion on sigil of consumption instead eor modifier.

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Hi all, yes I agree - nice build. How do you get such high damage? Can you enlighten me with a back of the envelope calculation? For example, when I look at EOR it seems to have about 400 flat damage x 12 attacks per second x 2000% damage, but that only gets to roughly 100k damage. Does the 400k number include resists reduction? How much damage do critical hits contribute? Thanks!!

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Sheet damage per second doesn’t ever include crits or resist reduction (or WPS if you’re using an auto attack build).

here’s a rough calculation:
EoR: 172+138+82 (from the set bonus)= 392
Soulfire: 151+175*(.95) [the parts converted to acid]= 321
321 + 392 = 713 * 25 (acid multiplier + spirit multiplier) = 18000
Weapon damage: 15000*(.35) * 2(EoR uses both hands) = 10500 + 18000= ~28.5k per hit + 840 (see below) 29300 * 12.5 hits per second = 366k dps.

In game it says 30078-31345 per hit of EoR (which times 12.5 equals the DPS shown). EoR also does 4350 * 25 = 108,000 poison damage over 5 seconds, but it only is listed as doing 30,000 per hit. Since DoT effects don’t stack with themselves, the only sensible way to reconcile this is to divide the 108,000 by the 125 hits per five seconds, which comes out to 840 additional damage per hit, which is a reasonable number to apply here, and gets pretty close to the actual dps.

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That’s great, thanks!

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One follow up question. How do you get to 23000 for the weapon damage portion? With a 2400% damage bonus that looks like each weapon needs to do 1000 damage per hit, but the base weapon damage is only about 100 on each sword. Do you have 900 flat damage somehow? Thanks!

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Grimtools gives it, as does the in game readout. I mistakenly gave the number for attacks which includes the chance of hitting with both weapons, not weapon damage. I updated that calculation to reflect this.

The actual weapon damage is around 15.5k. To get that, you need to look at all the different sources of flat damage of flat damage: another 16-24 on the sword, and look at the relic, gloves, rings, belt, the skills Solael’s Witchfire, Blood of Dreeg, Posession, and Presence of Virtue/Rebuke, and the manticore devotion. Sure, not all of these get entirely converted to acid damage, and some of these are damage over time effects which I think need to be divided by the number of hits over their application time, but that’s where the damage comes from.

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Good to see more controller-focused builds. Nice.

You could also propose a Dervish Lazy Dunefield, which would have mostly the same gear with possibly a slight devotion variation. It could possibly have less button mashing due to extra passive %RR of Night’s chill vs having to break from EoR to cast CoF/Judment. You lose some benefits of possession, but the OK Exclusives can be nice. Since EoR %WD is only 35%, the loss of some WD shouldn’t impact too much.

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Thanks! I guess I need to become more proficient with grimtools (which I love by the way).

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I actually did do that in my introduction, with a grimtools link for comparison, and concluded that it was inferior to the sentinel version. I also did a thing on Possession vs Path of the Three in the “Skill choices” section. Dervish would actually have more button pressing though, since you’d have to cast Amarasta’s Blade Burst every 4s to keep up lethal assault instead of Curse of Frailty every 8.2s, which isn’t exactly button mashing anyway. If you wanted to get rid of all of that, you could use the scorpion devotion for DAR instead of judgement, but without ABB or Solael’s Witchfire you wouldn’t have near the damage. It would probably be easier to cut curse of frailty from the sentinel build. If you want a version specifically designed for people recovering from repetitive stress injuries, I could work on that.

To me, controller friendly doesn’t mean that it’s built for maximum laziness, just that the build doesn’t require significant changes to be played on a controller. I only play on a controller, so all my builds are controller friendly. There are some builds, however, that rely on precise micro, or require a ton of different buttons to press (I consider 8 the max, based on my standard xbox controller), and these are not controller friendly.

I’m not sure I would call this build a lazy dunefiend, it’s just so strong you can afford get lazy with it on almost all normal content, such as Morgoneth.

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Ahh, I didn’t read your intro.

I was imagining something along these lines: grimtools, but without ABB, as although ABB is a nice boost, it’s not that critical here for the %WD. The main boost of EoR is the flat when in EoR, and 3K OA with ~51% crit and similar %acid should even it out, as a minimum. Bat can be a good source of spam in EoR, as well with nice vit->acid convert.

I like TtheScales as a devotion, but with 3K+DA, it might not activate all that much. So I just threw in Blade for some more minor pierce support (bat, some %WD)

But, I’ve not tested this so you may be accurate on your evaluation.

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I’m not sure how much energy Harp gives, but if it isn’t a lot you’re going to have a lot of trouble keeping your energy up, with that little spirit. More importantly, you’re sacrificing 700 armor and 8% absorption, and you’ve lost the overcaps for Poison, Vit, Chaos, and Aether, plus the damage absorption from Possession. The extra DA you have is like mostly just from moving points from spirit into physique, which you can do as a sentinel, but I can’t imagine it coming close to making up those differences. You’re getting some defense back from Ring of Steel, but I thought the point of this build was to have no buttons to press other than EoR.
If you’re going to be pressing a button, ABB will be much better than Shadow Strike. You get a huge chunk of OA, which you need since without ascension you’re only at 2800, and you don’t have the 272 DAR from Judgement (I would have at least replaced it with the 150 DAR from Scorpion), and ABB/LA also gives a big chunk of flat damage. Sure, weapon damage only accounts for around 40% of my EoR’s damage, but you don’t have much more than half my weapon damage, and a lot of it is in pierce, which has around 30% less RR than acid. And a lot of what you do have is from vitriolic gallstones. (With seal of blades, you’d be at about half as much weapon damage as me, or a cost of around 80k dps). You’re also missing 15% attack speed, and 10 points of lifesteal, or approximately a third of the total lifesteal of EoR, and with the huge reduction in weapon damage that you’re dealing, your effective lifesteal will be much much lower. I use the seals of blades because I didn’t have enough lifesteal with vitriolic gallstones, so I don’t see how you’re going to have enough. I have around 13% effective damage to health, while I think you have around 7%. Bat is not going to come close to making up that difference between 13% of 380,000 DPS, and 7% of maybe 300,000. Couple that with the reduced defenses, and I think you’re going to be dying a ton. You could probably do the story alright with that build, but I don’t see it having anywhere near the SR potential of a sentinel, with or without button presses.

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I can’t realistically argue a build that I have not played, but I’ll just note a few things:

  • You overestimate your health leech. Seal of blades works on each individual weapon, not combined - with the exception of an off-hand. This means that your lifesteal on each hand is ~17% wpn dmg. So .017*35 = ~6% of wpn damage when in EoR (in addition to set bonus). It also may be that you need to stress lifesteal because your current DA is lower.

  • Note that Bat has a strong pierce-through effect at 40% health leech. But the main leech of EoR comes from the 5% of the EoR base set bonus. I think you may be pleasantly surprised at how effective a consistent bat spam can be.

  • Extra DA in Nightblade is from a few sources: Pneumatic burst and some of the itemization. Note there is also a further debuf of -130 OA not mentioned on the character sheet from the VoS aura.

  • Attack speed will generally max out (200%) with the item buffs most of the time. Some components can also be tweaked, as well.

  • Crab is very nice extra defence vs aether, choas. But generally in my experience elemental overcaps are more useful due to the majority of debufs being of this type. I actually was wondering how the fight with Mogdrogen would be with such little overcap on lightning.

  • Here SS is a handy movement skill for relocation and emergency. In addition to the rune.

  • RoS is just for fun for some variety and is not at all essential and will probably never see use. Those points are essentially meaningless.

  • Your point about OA is valid but I’m confident that more thoughtful tweaks to components and devotions can get this up to 3K without ascension.

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[“Sentinel? More like Spintinel am I right?”]

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Those are all good points, however there are a few things to point out:

  • grimtools may not add the seal of blades lifesteal correctly, but I still have 17% (not the 22% shown) to your 7%, which is what I used for my calculation. My experience with bat tells me it won’t be that good, but I could be wrong. Detailed calculations hidden in case you don’t want to see them…

    The 5% bonus from the set is equivalent to around 12.5% lifesteal, with weapon damage making up 35% of my attack. and I’m lifestealing 17% of that * .35 = 6%, so I’m doing 11% damage to health. You’re going only 65% of the weapon damage I am, and at 41% of the lifesteal that I am. .65 * .41 = .26, so you’re getting a quarter of the healing from weapon damage that I am, which was worth 6% of EoR’s damage. 6/4 = 1.5, putting your damage to health equivalent to about 6.5% of my EoR’s damage, and 6.5/11 is about 60%. So
    You have 60% of the EoR healing that I have…

  • Murmur gives -96 OA, although it isn’t as reliable as veil of shadow, althought I forgot about VoS’s total speed reduction. If I take all points from spirit and put them into physique, as you did, DA would be over 2800, much closer to yours.

  • I didn’t build this for Mogdrogon - I’ve never killed hiim on ultimate. I tried fighting him and it went… not well. I just looked at his abilities, and the 80% elemental resist reduction is probably why. It looks like he and his pets do only lightning, physical, pierce, and cold damages, so I could easily swap out other resists to get the overcap to deal with him. I’ll probably try that, and update the guide if it goes well.

  • With the attack speed in my build, and like 20 rolls on swords, I think I’m actually at 201%. With perfect rolls you’d be at 196%, but I’d expect you’d have trouble getting it over 190, which would be about a 5% damage loss. You decide how important you think that is.

1 Like
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I was inspired by the awesome results of this build and decided to take a crack at the Cyclone set for my Archon. This combination always had problems with low attack speed and move speed. But now Magi and Wendigo both have IAS and are easy to reach, so that’s a big effective buff for this build. I came up with this: https://www.grimtools.com/calc/p25kBWKZ

Any suggestions to improve it before I start farming for the components?

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That looks pretty good to me. The following is a long list of criticisms, not because I don’t think your build looks good, but because I like being thorough and I like building.

  • Your EoR won’t have as much damage, as you’re not dual wielding, and you won’t get the awesome 5% damage to health that it provides, so I’m unsure about your healing, especially since you are missing the 16% damage absorption from Possession. I don’t know if the healing from wendigo totem will make up for that. I’m also concerned that you won’t have enough energy regen, since EoR is really thirsty, and your energy pool is much smaller. If you do have trouble with energy, taking a few points out of physique and putting them into spirit (I know, I know, that’s not the meta) is probably the best way to solve that.

  • My biggest concern is how reliant your build seems to be on Ascension. When it’s inactive, you have 2800 OA which will really cut into the benefit of that 64% crit damage. I’d recommend putting points into judgement for its lovely 264 DAR, as that makes a huge difference. More worryingly, your stun, freeze, and petrify resists will go down a ton, (55% stun can be a problem since so many enemies seem to have stun). I highly recommend a seal of resonance for your offhand. You’d lose some flat weapon damage, but with only one weapon probably around 80% of your damage will be from the EoR skill itself, and you won’t do any damage when you’re stunned/frozen/petrified/dead. For freeze and petrify, you could add a Galewind Treads with good bleed resist, and take out a bloodied crystal for a frozen heart. They may not add lightning damage, but you have a big enough lightning multiplier that you should be OK.

  • I don’t really play much shaman because I hate having to maintain the wind devils and storm totems, so I don’t know if the damage from Maelstorm and Storm Totem is worth all those points. The raw damage output of EoR is so high - I’d guess you’ll be around 300k dps, maybe higher - so I don’t know if the Storm Totems and Maelstrom points are going to substantially add to that. You might be better off with some of those points in judgement for damage, and wendigo totem/blood pact for healing.

  • You may actually have more damage with a 10% AS bonemonger’s amulet than with the runed topaz, even though you’d lose one point in EoR. You might get enough points back to balance it out.

  • Your devotions look good, but I think you’d get more Hand of Ultos Procs if you put in on storm totem instead, since you only need to proc Reckless Tempest every 10s.

  • If you’re dying too much, you can replace Survivor’s Ingenuities with Irrah’s Patiences as necessary.

  • The last thing I’ll say is I’ve never used arcane spark, so I don’t know if its disruption resist will be enough against every boss. A Mythical Eternal band would probably be a good idea.

  • I’d personally put a point into both Vire’s Might and Tectonic Shift, since I like moving around fast, and since you never know when you’re going to really need to run away. Also, there are good runes for debuffing enemies, and having Vire’s Might would let you use the rune aggressively into the enemies while still being able to run away whenever necessary.

I think your build is going to do well, so let me know how it goes.

1 Like
22

I reckon energy won’t be a problem because I have Mogdrogen’s Pact and also because I’m using an offhand, not dual-wielding. I have about double the energy gen as you do in GT. As you say health regen is a legitimate question since I don’t have anything like the skill modifier for ADctH from Dunefiend set. With the healing boosts from both masteries, maybe I nab Giant’s Blood instead of the Wendigo points just to supplant the lower amount of self-healing available.

I like the Bonemonger idea. I wish I could fit in the chestpiece too, but the Dawnshard chest is the best choice to get the last point in EoR back. Then my Reaper legs finally find a perfect home where they belong.

I used to play a Cyclone Monk in Diablo III, so I can appreciate the value of Judgment. 1 point to get 5 in Crushing Verdict seems to be pretty good bang for the buck. I can tell you that the points that I take won’t be from the Wind Devil or Storm Totem, they actually do a ton of damage.

Played around with it and I think this is the best solution: https://www.grimtools.com/calc/dVby3rY2 tried a path with Spear but then I can’t reach Chariot or Giant’s Blood, so I’ll roll with this and see how it goes.

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